2023 | Weeks 3–4

Posted on February 4, 2023 by badblokebob

“Wait, did I miss Weeks 1 and 2?”, you may have asked yourself upon seeing this post pop up wherever you see my posts. And the answer is: no, I missed them, because I failed to watch a single film in either Week 1 or Week 2 of 2023. Most extraordinary.

Anyway, I wrote about that in January’s monthly review, so let’s get on with reviewing. I will note that I’ve skipped a couple of films from these weeks. Normally I only do that when I’ve already written their review and it’s long enough I feel it should be posted solo. I haven’t formally started writing about either The Girl Who Knew Too Much or Black Girl yet, but I have an inkling they’re both going to be quite long (the latter, definitely), so I’ve set them aside for the time being. Which leaves us with…

The Magician (1926)

Glass Onion (2022)

My Year of Dicks (2022)

Shotgun Wedding (2022)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

The Magician

(1926)

Rex Ingram | 80 mins | Blu-ray | 1.33:1 | USA / silent

Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, itself inspired by the antics of real-life occultist Aleister Crowley, The Magician concerns a mad scientist, Oliver Haddo (Paul Wegener), trying to complete an alchemical spell to create life by kidnapping a pretty virginal sculptor, Margaret (Alice Terry), so he can cut out her heart and use her blood. But why just kidnap a young woman when you can hypnotise her into marrying you? And why just kill her when you can use your hypnotic control to, er, take her gambling in Monte Carlo and make lots of money?

Wait, what?

Yeah, The Magician is kind of an odd film. Whether that’s due to Maugham’s original work and his desire to write a takedown of Crawley, or if it was the impetus of director Rex Ingram fancying a jolly around Europe with his wife, who he’d cast in the lead female role, I don’t know. Either way, the varied asides (before the eponymous Haddo even turns up, Margaret is paralysed in a sculpting accident and goes for experimental surgery to get it fixed) slow the pace, possibly to pad out what is really quite a slight story. On the other hand, there are some atmospheric sequences scatted throughout, like a demonstration of Haddo’s powers at a snake charming show, or a devilish orgy (yes, you read that right; no, it’s not at all shocking by modern standards). Plus, as if to balance out all the stuff with dark magic, Ingram finds room for dashes of humour, giving a bit of texture and stopping the film from becoming too self-serious.

However, The Magician remains most noteworthy today as a stylistic precursor to Universal’s initial run of horror movies in the early ’30s — James Whale’s Frankenstein, in particular, seems to have taken some cues from this film’s climax. It’s a fairly entertaining melodramatic fantasy-horror in its own right, but is primarily worth a look for those interested in the early development of the horror genre in Hollywood, or for silent movie fans who’d like something with a supernatural edge. General audiences are probably fine sticking to the established classics it influenced.

The Magician is the 1st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

Glass Onion

(2022)

aka Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

In some respects, Glass Onion delivered a movie closer to what I’d been expecting from the first Benoit Blanc mystery, Knives Out; that is to say, a proper murder mystery that is also unabashedly a comedy. Don’t get me wrong, I found Knives Out amusing — even more so with subsequent rewatches — but it has a kind of dry humour, with a wit more likely to raise a wry smile of acknowledgement than a guffaw. Glass Onion surely has such moments too, but it also has big, broad laughs that stand out more on a first viewing.

The mystery at its core remains a true Christie-style puzzler, with enough about-turn twists to keep you off balance — you can try and guess what’s going on if you want, but it’s just as much fun to be swept along for the ride — but the surrounding material is satirical almost to the point of parody. Kate Hudson’s airhead influencer is more caricature than character, for example, while there’s no doubt that Edward Norton’s billionaire is a merciless pisstake of Elon Musk. That’s annoyed certain right-wing commentators. The rest of us can just enjoy the accurate pillorying.

This overall shift in tone will, I think, dictate which of the two movies viewers prefer — i.e. whichever one hews closer to your personal taste. On the other hand, maybe you’ll be like me, and enjoy them both for their own particular quirks. I’ve already watched Knives Out three times, so I’ll have to watch Glass Onion a couple more to make any kind of fair comparison. Fortunately, I intend to.

Glass Onion placed 1st on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2023.

My Year of Dicks

(2022)

Sara Gunnarsdóttir | 26 mins | digital (HD) | 1.78:1 | USA & Iceland / English

One of the standout moments of this year’s Oscars nominations announcement was when Riz Ahmed read out the Best Short Animation nominees, thus having to proclaim “My Year of Dicks” to the world — especially as it was immediately followed by “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”. Only one of those is currently available to watch online, so I did.

The autobiographical story of screenwriter Pamela Ribon trying to lose her virginity in early-’90s Texas, My Year of Dicks unfolds across five vignettes, each telling a different (but connected) story of sexual misadventure. The chaptered structure gives away that this is kinda five short films strung together; but they’re also a series, with a definite through-narrative (if you’ve ever watched any narrative film before, you’ll easily spot the early supporting character who’s destined to have greater significance). So, while it doesn’t fully work as a single ‘film’ (it feels like binge-watching a series of short episodes), there is at least a reason to lump them all together as a unit.

The parts are further differentiated by employing a variety of animation styles to depict Pam’s fantasies and inner feelings. It’s an effective use of the medium to help overcome the fact that the actual stories are relatively rote “coming of age” tales. The most successful of all is the excruciating “sex talk” with Pam’s dad, in which a bombardment of animated self destruction reflects the desire for escape we’re all feeling at that point.

As a story based around female sexuality, My Year of Dicks has an air of timeliness about it. Equally, it feels like such barriers have been continually been being broken down for the past 20 or 30 years now; in which case, one does wonder if its success has as much to do with the amusement value in seeing that title on the Oscar short list as it does the film itself.

You can watch My Year of Dicks for free on Vimeo.

Shotgun Wedding

(2022)

Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel are about to get married in front of their family and friends at a remote tropical resort when pirates turn up demanding a ransom. Action and hilarity ensue. How exciting the action and how hilarious the hilarity is where opinions may differ.

For my money, the end result is a perfectly serviceable star-driven action-comedy. It’s the kind of middle-of-the-road, made-for-date-night fare that people keep bemoaning we’re losing thanks to Marvel’s box office dominance, even though Hollywood actually seems to keep making them (for another example from just last year, see The Lost City), and they get fairly widely slated every time one actually comes out.

Okay, the vast majority of the film’s funniest ideas and moments were in the trailer (heck, the way the first promo was edited to make the film look like a rom-com, only to about-turn into an action movie, is probably the best gag associated with the entire project), but the film itself has held back a couple of laugh-worthy moments, and even a few plot twists. No wheels are reinvented, but it’s fine as bit of non-demanding, Friday-night, never-going-to-watch-it-again, easy viewing.

Shotgun Wedding is the 5th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

The Banshees of Inisherin

(2022)

The new film from the writer-director of Three Billboards reunites the star pairing from his first movie, In Bruges, for an altogether different — but equally as hilarious — tale of two Irishmen. Here, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play lifelong friends on a small island off the coast of Ireland in the 1920s; that is until one day Gleeson decides he just doesn’t like Farrell anymore. Cue a serious of escalating encounters as Gleeson tries to get his former mate to just leave him be.

After the quite heavy, discourse-provoking narrative of Three Billboards, Banshees feels somewhat like McDonagh heading for smaller-scale, less contentious waters. Not that I think he’s running in fear — he doesn’t seem like one to avoid confrontation or provocation around his art — but I think that Banshees feels more of a piece with Bruges, in that it’s focused on just a handful of characters and their fairly everyday lives. That said, things do get a bit… outrageous; and the Irish civil war is ticking away on the mainland, suggesting at least one thematic interpretation of the friends’ fallout. That’s not to mention the subplots involving Farrell’s sister outgrowing her place on the island, or the woes of the local village idiot (played superbly by Barry Keoghan) and his abusive father, who happens to be the island’s policeman.

All of which might begin to sound a bit serious. But then, juggling life-and-death issues and hilarity is almost McDonagh’s trademark. Indeed, the film’s biggest laugh is related to the story of a woman’s death; meanwhile, its saddest moment involves not the abuse or self-mutilation of any of the human characters, but rather the fate of a beloved animal (that might read as a spoiler, but I consider it fair warning for animal lovers). In viewing, it’s consistently very funny, but creeps up on you with Stuff To Think About, too. I enjoyed it a lot; maybe not as much has In Bruges or Glass Onion (no relatable comparison there other than I watched them both this month), but enough that my score rounds up.

The Banshees of Inisherin is the 6th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

2022 | Week 35

Posted on December 23, 2022 by badblokebob

When I revived 2007’s weekly(-ish) review compilation format at the start of 2022, the main objective was to write shorter reviews (not necessarily as short as the couple-of-sentences-per-film I wrote back in 2007, but not worrying about trying to do full write-ups for everything), which would help enable me to stay more up-to-date. Well, the former has only been partially successful, and that means the latter has slipped, too: here we are, rapidly heading towards the end of December, and I’m only just posting reviews of films I watched at the end of August / start of September. I’m certainly not going to have 2022 finished before 2023 begins.

Hey-ho, there’s nothing to be done about it — other than remind myself I was intending to be more concise and more on top of things, and continue to try to push myself in that direction. In the meantime, on we go, with…

Mona Lisa (1986)

Mirror (1975), aka Zerkalo

Clerks (1995)

Persuasion (2022)

He Walked by Night (1948)

Mona Lisa

(1986)

Neo-noir filtered through a British sensibility — which means you get a character study merely garnished with genre thrills, especially when the character in question is played by Bob Hoskins, adding depth and complexity to your could-be-straightforward protagonist.

Said protagonist is George, a recently-released minor gangster looking for work. He’s an interesting mix of a character: streetwise but also kinda naïve; racist and judgemental, but without really meaning it. It’s like he’s just reciting stuff he’s heard from everyone else, rather than it being stuff he really believes. Well, isn’t that true of so many with horrendous opinions? These days they just get them from YouTube. George’s prejudices are somewhat challenged when he’s assigned to drive around a high-class call girl, Simone, who happens to be black. Although Hoskins took most of the plaudits (including an Oscar nomination and BAFTA win), as Simone, Cathy Tyson breathes an equal amount of life into a character that, similarly, in lesser hands could’ve just been a plot-driving mystery. (She was also nominated for a BAFTA, incidentally.)

The film’s style is an interesting mishmash, in that it has an element of British grit and groundedness — especially being shot on grainy film, all on location in London, in a world of everyday gangsters and prostitutes — but with fantastical and/or genre flourishes — George’s friend Thomas creates weird art stuff and engages in literary discussions; nighttime London is shot to look like a vision of Hell; and then there’s all the noir stuff in the construction of the story. There’s a version of this film that fully gives in to that genre, but the comedy and ‘fantasy’ dilutes the neo-noir aspects, making the film more unique, and distinctly British.

The fact Arrow initially released Mona Lisa as the de facto lesser half of a double-bill with earlier Hoskins-starring gangster flick The Long Good Friday does it something of a disservice (though it’s also is the primary reason I had it in my collection to prompt me to watch it, so swings and roundabouts). This is a film more than worthy of standing on its own; and one that, while not poorly regarded or completely forgotten, merits a wider rediscovery.

Mona Lisa is the 53rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022. It placed 11th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2022.

Mirror

(1975)

aka Zerkalo

Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic evocation of memory and mid-20th-century Soviet history. If that sounds a bit Arty, just wait ’til you hear Criterion’s blurb, which says it’s “as much a poem composed in images, or a hypnagogic hallucination, as it is a work of cinema.” Oh dear, sounds like Hard Work, right? Well, it is.

Calling it “visual poetry” might sound like pretentiousness, but it really isn’t — Mirror definitely plays more like that than a traditional narrative film. And, just like most poetry, I didn’t really get it. I must confess that I was tuning out by the end; partly due to tiredness, which is my own fault; but partly that the film gave me nothing to really latch on to; no (clear) narrative or character or anything for me to focus on to keep my wavering attention in the right place. On the bright side, it avoided being a total disaster in my eyes by having some nice-looking bits, and individual scenes or sequences that kinda work. But I absolutely do not “get it” as a whole cohesive piece of art.

Clearly, this kind of thing works for some people — Sight & Sound’s most recent poll ranked it 31st, and the director’s poll (which I would normally argue errs slightly more mainstream) went even better and placed it 8th. Each to their own. Based on his work that I’ve seen so far, I just don’t think Tarkovsky’s for me.

Mirror is the 54th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2022.

Clerks

(1994)

Kevin Smith | 88 mins | DVD | 1.85:1 | USA / English | 15 / R

There’s no escaping the fact that Clerks is very much a product of its time, both in itself as a work of art, and in how it became a breakout success. (Can you imagine a film like this launching a career like Kevin Smith had (for a bit) if it was made today? Best you could hope for now is being seen by half-a-dozen festival-goers before the director gets tapped to be Kevin Feige’s puppet on some Marvel content.) That said, for all its ’90s-time-capsule-ness, it holds up pretty well as a piece of entertainment. By which I mean, I laughed multiple times and was never bored.

The story, such as it is, concerns a pair of convenience store workers hanging out for a day, and the various little dramas and incidents that occur to and around them. Serving as both writer and director, Smith quite cleverly turns bugs into features. No budget? Make that the whole aesthetic, with grainy 16mm photography and an everyday setting in which ‘nothing’ happens. Non-pro actors? Have everyone deliver all their lines mile-a-minute, thus making the whole thing feel kinda heightened and stylised, to the point where you can’t be sure if most of the cast can’t act or it was all a deliberate choice. This is further fed by Smith often letting scenes play out in long takes with no cuts — if these guys can remember all their lines to do a whole scene in a oner, they must be pretty professional, right?

Impressively for a first-timer behind the camera, Smith doesn’t go overboard with directorial flourishes. There’s the occasional shot or sequence with some extra pizzazz to keep up the visual interest, but he seems to know that less is more; that this is the kind of film that plays best in medium shots. This might sound like basic stuff, but evidence shows that first-time filmmakers with something to prove are regularly tempted to go all-out and make something that feels Directed. That might be nice for a showreel, but for an actual film, restraint goes a long way.

Technique aside, the content just works. These characters are likeable enough to hang out with for 90 minutes, because that’s effectively all we’re doing. But there’s enough variety in their conversations and situations, and enough genuinely funny lines and moments, that it works and is enjoyable, rather than being a dull or directionless slice-of-life piece.

Clerks is the 55th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Persuasion

(2022)

Jane Austen adaptations appear to be perennially popular, so it was probably only a matter of time before Netflix attempted one. Here, they’ve retained the original setting but given proceedings a modern-ish wash, apparently influenced by their hit series Bridgerton style (I’ve never seen Bridgerton, so this is based on the trailers and that others have made the same comparison). The result? A trailer that met with a great deal of displeasure from Austen fans, not keen on the apparent irreverence to the source material. I’ve never read Austen, either, so I’ll leave exact comparisons to the more knowledgeable.

That said, I can’t say the trailer fully won me over, but I thought I’d allow the film its chance. And it’s not terrible — there are lots of nice scenes and moments to be found. Unfortunately, they’re undercut by the bits everyone talked about from the trailer: the clearly-Fleabag-inspired gurns to camera; the banal and misplaced modern-style dialogue. The really sad thing is that there aren’t actually very many of those bits — the ones that were widely cited as “examples” are nearly all of them, in fact — and so there is nearly a very nice film here.

Dedicated fans of Austen’s original work, and those who prefer their period dramas played straight and faithful, will likely still find those moments off-putting. If you’re prepared to overlook the missteps, this Persuasion is largely likeable.

Persuasion is the 56th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

He Walked by Night

(1948)

“A film that started as a humble low-budget offering from a second-tier studio, but wound up being one of the most influential films of its era” is how ‘Czar of Noir’ Eddie Muller describes He Walked by Night in his introduction for TCM’s Noir Alley strand. That’s partly because it inspired the radio series Dragnet, which was immensely significant in the development of police procedural series, a genre that remains a bread-and-butter staple of TV entertainment to this day. But also because it was shot by cinematographer John Alton — “the greatest noir stylist of all time”, says Muller, and here he produced “one of the most dramatically photographed film noirs ever”. There’s debate over whether the film was actually helmed by its credited director, Alfred Werker, or if Anthony Mann actually did most of the work. “It doesn’t really matter,” says Muller, “because the picture’s held together by the stunning visual style of its singular cinematographer”.

Well, I can’t disagree. This is a gorgeously shot film, and a concise exemplar of all we know of film noir style — primarily, abundant shadows. But it’s not just the imagery that makes it work. There are multiple tense suspense sequences, often making great use of silence — this is a film not afraid to be quiet when it’s effective — climaxing with an incredibly atmospheric chase and shootout in the LA storm drain system. We spend a lot of time with the villain, Roy Martin — the film is definitely a howcatchem; no whodunit mystery here — who’s superbly played by Richard Basehart. Coming back to the point about silence, Martin is a loner, so he doesn’t get much dialogue a lot of the time, but Basehart still effectively conveys how smart and cunning he is. Also worthy of note is Whit Bissell as an electronics dealer who unwittingly sold on ‘inventions’ that Martin had in fact stolen. The poor guy is clearly innocent and been duped, but he ends up between a rock and a hard place when the police aren’t sure they believe that.

The overall style of He Walked by Night is intensely procedural and serious about it, but it still finds room for glimpses of character, both from the cops and the criminals; and there’s humour, too. That helps give it a bit of light and shade, and also genuine reality — you’ll find humorousness everywhere in real life, however serious events may be.

He Walked by Night is the 57th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

2022 | Week 34

Posted on December 3, 2022 by badblokebob

Skipping week 33 (when I didn’t watch anything), here are all the films I watched in week 34 — which, if anyone’s interested, was back in August. Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to get caught up on my 2022 reviews before the end of the year…

The Winter Guest (1997)

Repeat Performance (1947)

Carousel (1956)

The Winter Guest

(1997)

The writing and directing debut of actor Alan Rickman, The Winter Guest follows four loosely-connected pairs of characters through a day in their lives, all confined to a small Scottish seaside town where the stark winter has turned the sea to ice. It’s the kind of film where nothing happens: the characters hang out with each other and talk, basically, with their issues ranging from bereavement to stereotypical teenage sex obsession (one boy played by a young Sean Biggerstaff wants… a bigger staff, wink wink. Sorry, the pun was too tempting to avoid).

The confined setting and characters means the end result feels theatrical in both style and content — it’s basically just a series of two-handers, with quite mannered dialogue. And yet its staging isn’t so limited, because Rickman and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey do an excellent of of evoking the chilly surroundings (most of the film is set outside), giving the scenery a painterly feel. That’s probably in part due to using digital matte paintings to convey the frozen ocean, but it extends to the beaches and town buildings, too. Or it could just be an unintended side effect of the smoothing conferred by watching in digitally compressed SD; but as it’s just about my favourite aspect of the film, let’s assume it was intentional and skilfully done.

Repeat Performance

(1947)

Alfred Werker | 93 mins | Blu-ray | 1.37:1 | USA / English

On the eve of 1947, actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) shoots dead her husband (original Saint Louis Hayward). She flees, ending up at the home of her producer (second Falcon Tom Conway) in the early hours of New Year’s Day… 1946. Given the chance to re-live the past year, can she make things right?

Repeat Performance gets classified as film noir, but I feel like it’s one of those films that sits on the periphery of what qualifies for the genre. The opening — in which a woman shoots dead her husband, in New York City at night — yes, very noir. But what unfurls over the next 90 minutes is more of a backstage romantic melodrama by way of Twilight Zone-style fantasy. But that’s the thing with noir: as a movement that wasn’t recognised and codified as a genre until after it was over, what ‘counts’ can be a very broad church.

Here, the odd combination of styles makes for an unusual and mostly entertaining film. My only real gripe is that we’re given very little idea what went on in the ‘original’ 1946, so it’s hard to tell how much effort Sheila is actually making to change it, or to follow how successful she’s being. This kind of perspective is perhaps the benefit of a further 75 years of development and refinement in the field of fantastical storytelling — Repeat Performance isn’t a Fantasy film in the true genre sense, more a Thriller with a neat inciting twist, a la Sliding Doors (my go-to example of a Fantasy film that doesn’t care it’s a Fantasy film!)

The plot is bolstered by strong or likeable performances across the board. Some of the lead cast may be better known for starring in B-movie schedule-fillers, but this is proof if proof were needed that to interpret that as a sign of limited skill on their part would be an incorrect conclusion. Which is a rather torturous way of saying “Hayward and Conway were quite good actors, actually”. Hayward is particularly good here, getting to show off his range from loving husband to psychopathic abuser, plus a few other stages in between. Conway is more at the likeable end of the spectrum as Sheila’s kindly producer, while Richard Basehart’s performance (in his movie debut) as queer-coded poet William Williams (in the original novel, the character is a transvestite) was so impressive that the producers gave him more scenes with Leslie and bumped up his billing.

Repeat Performance is the 52nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Carousel

(1956)

Carousel is a spectacularly odd entry in the Rodgers & Hammerstein canon of musicals. Based on a play called Liliom (which was previously filmed by Frank Borzage in 1930 and Fritz Lang in 1934), it tells the story of a carnival barker (Gordon MacRae) who’s been dead 15 years, but in flashback we learn of how he fell in love and married, and how he died, and why he now gets a chance to go back for a day to make amends. That almost makes the film sound focused. As it plays out, the storyline has a weirdly aimless quality, not helped by songs that are mostly mediocre or bizarre. That’s before we get to the horrendously outdated views on domestic violence, or the fact that it’s not actually got very much to do with the titular fairground attraction.

The darker material and themes could work in the right setting, but here they clash with the sunny seaside photography and stereotypically cheerful musical numbers. I mean, this is a story about a physically abusive husband and wannabe small-time crook, who can’t even change his ways when the afterlife gives him a second chance, and we have songs about the beauty of summer and the joys of a clambake (the latter may haunt your memories…)

A strange film, and not in the good way. At least it’s made me curious to see the Borzage and Lang versions — perhaps as a straight drama it will be more obvious why this has merited adaptation so many times.

2022 | Weeks 29–32

Posted on November 25, 2022 by badblokebob

2022 may be rushing headlong towards its final stretch (only one month ’til Christmas, people!), but my reviews are lagging behind somewhat: this update takes us all the way back to July and August.

That said, there’s quite a long spread covered here, because I only watched one film in each of these weeks: 45 Years in week 29, The Bucket List in week 30, previously-reviewed Prey in week 31, and Tintin and the Lake of Sharks in week 32. That’s definitely not the right way to go about watching 100 films in a year, but there we go.

45 Years (2015)

The Bucket List (2007)

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972), aka Tintin et le lac aux requins

45 Years

(2015)

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay star as a couple preparing for their 45th wedding anniversary party, when their comfy relationship is rocked by news that brings to the surface events from his past.

What could have been a histrionic drama about the nature of trust in a relationship instead takes its cue from the characters’ advanced age, and so is a more understated consideration of the same. The length and passage of time is relevant, too: if something happened a long time ago but you only just learnt about it, does that change how you react to the news? Should it? And is the real revelation not the news itself, but the realisation that, even if you’ve lived closely with another person for decades, you can never be truly sure you know them. Another person’s true self is fundamentally unknowable, for any one of us.

All of which might sound a bit highfalutin, but 45 Years is the kind of film that revels in ambiguity, with characters who never let on their true feelings — in that sense, it feels like a deliberate Acting Showcase for Rampling — and a vague ending, all of which invites you to draw your own conclusions. The final moment feels pointed, but the openness of what went before means it’s up to you what it means. There’s something truthful about that, but also something frustrating.

The Bucket List

(2007)

I may have written before (but not recently, so let’s do it again) about how Rob Reiner’s directorial career baffles me. He had an incredible run in the ’80s and ’90s — almost back to back he helmed This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and A Few Good Men — but then his career suddenly nosedives into a bunch of stuff you’ve mostly never even heard of. What happened? Is there some “John Landis on Twilight Zone“-style ‘secret’ I’m unaware of?

One of the very few exceptions in his later career (which certainly didn’t lead to that being revived) was this, a breakout hit 15 years ago (yes, it’s 15 years old) of the kind they don’t make so much anymore: a mainstream comedy-drama aimed at adults. It’s about two old men (pure star power in Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) with only months left to live, who decide to spend their final days going on a tour of… green screen studios and kinda-low-res stock footage, apparently. I guess you didn’t get location filming on the kind of budget a film like this was made for even back in 2007.

Cheap production values aside, it has an insistent sentimentality — undercut with just a big enough dose of snark to stop it becoming too saccharine — that, unsurprisingly, played well with general audiences but, equally unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to be to the taste of many cinephiles (just look at the middling-to-low scores on Letterboxd, especially of the most-liked reviews, and contrast with its sturdy 7.4 score on IMDb). While I wouldn’t go quite as harsh as many of my fellow Letterboxd users, I do think it’s not that good — it’s broadly likeable, a generally pleasant way to pass 90 minutes, rather than in any way exceptional.

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks

(1972)

aka Tintin et le lac aux requins / The Adventures of Tintin: The Mystery of Shark Lake

Raymond Leblanc | 74 mins | DVD | 4:3 | Belgium & France / English | U

Having adapted several of Hergé’s Tintin books for TV and film, Belgian animation outfit Belvision for some reason opted to create an original story for their second big-screen outing with the character (it was later retrofitted into book form, using frames from the film as the illustrations). Written not by Hergé but his friend, fellow Belgian comics creator Greg (aka Michel Regnier), Lake of Sharks feels like exactly what it is: an imitation of a Tintin adventure rather than the real deal.

Events start out in a typically Tintin fashion, with some crooks after an invention of Professor Calculus’s; but later things take a turn for the Bondian, including an elaborate underwater lair that owes a debt to the imagination of Ken Adam. Eventually it all gets a bit silly, with stuff like an ever-expanding bouncy 3D photocopier, or the villain’s elaborate “you will die in one hour” execution method for Tintin. That kind of adventure serial writing has been so widely mocked at this point (the Austin Powers movies took aim at it 25 years ago; others may have done so before then) that it’s hard to remember there was ever a time when it was still played with a straight face.

The animation is mostly of a slightly higher quality than Belvision’s previous efforts, but the quality of the designs is variable. The regular cast feel faithfully copied from Hergé, and most other characters are in the right style; but there are a couple of major child characters who look out of place, along with their pet dog. It’s a bit like when you were a kid and mixed action figures from different ranges into the same game: yeah, they’re all still plastic figurines (or, in the case of the film, hand-drawn 2D characters), but stylistically they don’t line up.

The English dub is an American effort, and far from ideal. None of the voices are great, but most suffice once you get used to them. The exception is Captain Haddock, who is egregiously bad throughout. That said, we’re also subjected to the kids singing a song about a donkey that is unspeakably awful. Couldn’t they have cast actors who could sing? At least that would’ve taken the edge off it.

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks is the 50th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Scream 3 (2000)

Posted on October 29, 2022 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

The most terrifying scream
is always the last.

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 117 minutes
BBFC: 18
MPAA: R

Original Release: 4th February 2000 (USA & Canada)
UK Release: 28th April 2000
Budget: $40 million
Worldwide Gross: $161.8 million

Stars
Neve Campbell (Three to Tango, The Company)
David Arquette (Ravenous, Ready to Rumble)
Courtney Cox Arquette (Commandments, Zoom)
Liev Schreiber (Sphere, X-Men Origins: Wolverine)

Director
Wes Craven (The Last House on the Left, My Soul to Take)

Screenwriter
Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road, The Ring)

The Story
As production gets underway on Stab 3 — the latest in the series of horror movies based on the Woodsboro killings — someone wearing a Ghostface costume starts killing the cast. But really, they want to know one thing: the whereabouts of perpetual murder-target Sidney Prescott…

Our Heroes
With Sidney in hiding at a remote location known only to a handful of people, the initial investigation into the new killings falls to the other survivors of the previous films: Dewey, now working as a consultant-cum-security on Stab 3, and his former love interest, intrepid reporter Gale Weathers.

Our Villain
The Ghostface killer is back, now terrorising Hollywood — but who’s behind the mask this time? As with the first two films, this technically counts as a whodunnit, though well done if you guess anywhere near the correct conclusion — it’s hardly Christie-level…

Best Supporting Character
Mark Kincaid (Patrick Dempsey) is the Hollywood homicide detective investigating the murders. As someone who grew up around the movie biz, he’s as au fait with the rules of cinema as most of the characters have had to become — but does that mean he fits right in, or has all the knowledge necessary to be the new Ghostface?

Memorable Quote
“Is this simply another sequel? Well, if it is, same rules apply. But here’s the critical thing: if you find yourself dealing with an unexpected backstory and a preponderance of exposition, then the sequel rules do not apply. Because you are not dealing with a sequel, you are dealing with the concluding chapter of a trilogy.” — Randy

Memorable Scene
Looking for someone, Sidney wanders into the abandoned Stab 3 soundstage — to be confronted by a perfect full-size replica of her childhood home. As she wanders inside, remembering the terrifying events that occurred there, she begins to suspect the killer is also lurking. Cue a clever re-staging of one of the first film’s most memorable scenes, as the new killer chases Sidney around her old home.

Making of
Neve Campbell was busy shooting a TV series and another film during the production of Scream 3, meaning her availability was limited to just 20 days on set. That’s why Dewey, Gale, and the new supporting cast get so much more screentime now, with Sidney mostly by herself. But whoever was in charge of scheduling around Campbell’s availability actually did a pretty good job maximising her presence, spreading her appearances throughout the film, with a few key interactions with the rest of the cast. If you didn’t know the behind-the-scenes story, you might not even realise what they had to do.

Previously on…
The first Scream garnered much acclaim for its amusing deconstruction of slasher movies. Naturally, Scream 2 applied the same modus operandi to sequels.

Next time…
Scream 3 was supposedly the end of the series… but if there’s one thing popular horror movie franchises do, it’s keep coming back. So, a little over a decade later, the series was revived with Scre4m in 2011. Then it was turned into an unrelated TV series that ran for two seasons in 2015 and 2016. Then that was rebooted as Scream: Resurrection in 2019. Then the original movie continuity was returned to earlier this year, in the confusingly-titled Scream. That’s getting a sequel next year. Goodness knows what they’re gonna call it.

Awards
2 MTV Movie Award nominations (Female Performance (Neve Campbell), Comedic Performance (Parker Posey))
1 Fangoria Chainsaw Award (Supporting Actress (Parker Posey))

Verdict

The Scream movies were always noteworthy for the metatextual way in which they addressed and engaged with the tropes and clichés of slasher movies, but actually setting this one in Hollywood on the set of a slasher movie based on the events of the previous movies is perhaps taking the whole self-awareness thing one step too far. It pushes its luck even further with some cameos that are kinda fun, but also kinda too silly (Jay and Silent Bob?! So the Scream movies are canonically set in the View Askewniverse…) Plus, the attempt to retcon in a series-overarching motive for the killer, in aid of making it a true trilogy rather than just “another Scream movie”, is as forced and unsatisfying as it sounds.

All of which said, the film still has effective moments and individual sequences, and a smattering of entertaining gags that are still on the money. Even if it remains the least of the Scream films, but it’s far from the disaster it’s often been painted as.

2022 | Weeks 27–28

Posted on October 19, 2022 by badblokebob

Hello! Yes, it’s me — I am still here. I’ve just been finding my time filled up with other stuff: working on the 2022 iterations of both WOFFF and FilmBath Festival (in addition to the ol’ day job); dogsitting for the in-laws; throwing up from eating bad garlic…

Anyway, here are some reviews of films I watched all the way back in July. (Oh dear, I am behind. Well, let’s see if I can catch up…)

Johnny Gunman (1957)

A Better Tomorrow (1986), aka Ying hung boon sik

Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015)

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Johnny Gunman

(1957)

Art Ford | 67 mins | digital (HD) | 4:3 | USA / English

The history of cinema is littered with fascinating asides and dead ends, and this is one of them: an independent film from before independent films were really a thing; from the time when the studio system was beginning to falter, but the film school auteurs hadn’t yet arrived (Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, et al were still in their teens when this was made).

As with the films that would later break similar new ground after the digital video revolution in the ’90s, there are cracks — it’s amateurish and undeniably low-budget in places — but also artistry — every once in a while it’ll whip out an exceptionally well-lit scene or interesting visual. Story-wise, it’s an odd mix: there’s the noir-ish gangster plot line, which is derivative and clichéd; but it takes over the film from what you feel like it almost wants to be, which is a Before Sunrise-style slice of life. Maybe, in a freer world, that’s what the filmmakers would’ve produced; but when you’re one of the first people trying to break in from the outside, hitting the familiar beats of a genre is no bad idea.

Some of the highlights of the film come at the start, with documentary-like shots of New York street life when our heroine visits the Greenwich Festival. It’s a brief little window into the real 1950s NYC, before the rote gangster plot comes to dominate. Indeed, being shot on location, and with an inexperienced cast, lends the whole production a certain veracity that you don’t always get from soundstage-bound studio pictures of the era. On the other hand, that’s also what gives it the rough edges that will make it unpalatable to some viewers.

However you cut it, this is hardly a forgotten gem, but it’s an interesting detour of movie history that I’m glad I stumbled across.

Johnny Gunman is the 45th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

A Better Tomorrow

(1986)

aka Ying hung boon sik

A Better Tomorrow was the first in a run of modern-day gangster action movies that would make director John Woo’s name. Its original Chinese title translates as True Colours of a Hero, which is just as apt: it’s about a pair of mid-level crooks, one of whose brother is a cop, and the ways and whys in which they try and fail to escape the criminal life.

Woo’s style was cutting edge back in the day, but that day is now pushing 40 years ago. Of course, his flamboyant style has never been to some people’s taste (witness the dismissive stance some still take towards M:i-2). Viewed now, this is cheesier and less stylistically polished than his later career-defining HK films like The Killer or Hard Boiled, but, on the couple of occasions it does explode into action, it’s suitably grandiose, and it has an engaging storyline and character dynamics.

In regards to the latter, you can definitely see why Chow Yun-Fat was the breakout star. He’s actually got a supporting role, but his charisma shines off the screen, and there’s a plausibility to the way he handles the action. (Ironically, although it made Chow an action icon, he was cast because Woo didn’t think he looked like an action star.)

Not Woo’s strongest film, then, but a definite sign of someone headed in the right direction — and, clearly, his later work paid off that promise.

A Better Tomorrow is the 46th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022.

Mifune: The Last Samurai

(2015)

Steven Okazaki | 77 mins | DVD | 16:9 | USA & Japan / English & Japanese | 12

At just an hour and a quarter, this biography of the actor Toshiro Mifune feels more like a primer on his work and life (complete with newcomer-friendly contextual asides into the history of Japanese cinema, the career of Akira Kurosawa, etc) rather than the deep-dive exploration of the man and his legacy that some reviewers hoped for. I certainly learnt stuff, but such criticism has validity. For that reason, the less you know about Mifune (and Kurosawa), the more you’ll get out of the film. That said, it might pay to have already seen some of their films — it’s not that director Steven Okazaki doesn’t introduce and summarise them adequately; more that, if you’ve seen them, you know the full context.

Nonetheless, a good range of interviewees ensure the documentary is not without insight, managing to explore both what made Mifune the man tick and what made him such a phenomenal screen presence. Plus, the fact that Okazaki is happy to explain contextual topics (like a history of chanbara films; or matters of social history, like what losing World War 2 was like for the Japanese people) is both education and useful, because I imagine most non-Japanese viewers don’t have much baseline knowledge about this stuff. The film is definitely a biography of Mifune (not, say, a history of 20th century Japan using the actor as a gateway), but there’s much to be gleaned here for the interested viewer.

Mifune: The Last Samurai is the 47th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

The Lost Daughter

(2021)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, based on a novel by Elena Ferrante, stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a woman on holiday alone in Greece, where she encounters a young mother (Dakota Johnson) whose daughter briefly goes missing, reminding Leda of her own younger days, when she was played by Jessie Buckley and had a husband and two daughters herself.

It’s perhaps initially difficult to pin down exactly what The Lost Daughter is driving at — I suspect it’s the kind of film in which some people would say nothing happens. But it’s really a kind of mystery, where the mystery is the lead character’s psychology: why is she like this? There’s also the more obvious mystery of what exactly happened in her past, but that isn’t solved so much as gradually doled out in flashbacks. Obviously that kind of story relies a lot on its performances, and Colman is as strong as ever. So much of the importance of the film, which lies in her character and emotion, is conveyed without dialogue. That’s not do down the able support from Buckley and Johnson, mind.

Gyllenhaal’s direction is interesting and effective, using lots of fairly extreme close-ups to give a kind of tactile sensation to the film. On the other hand, I would say it feels a little longer than necessary (especially after the ‘reveal’ scene, where the final piece of the puzzle clicks), and I’m not convinced it knows how to end (or perhaps it’s my fault for not really ‘getting’ the finale).

Overall, though, it’s an impressive debut from Gyllanhaal, and a great alternative perspective on motherhood.

2022 | Week 26

Posted on September 8, 2022 by badblokebob

I’m taking you back over two months here, to the end of June / start of July, for another eclectic batch of films I happened to watch in close proximity to each other…

The Flying Deuces (1939)

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

Ambulance (2022)

Easy A (2010)

The Flying Deuces

(1939)

A. Edward Sutherland | 68 mins | DVD | 4:3 | USA / English | U

I feel like I’m aware of Laurel & Hardy in a way I would say “everyone” is, but I guess that’s probably not true anymore (the kind of stuff I picked up or learnt about by osmosis in my ’80s/’90s childhood is surely very different to what kids got growing up in the ’00s/’10s). But I don’t think I’ve ever actively seen any of their work; certainly none of their feature-length films. The Flying Deuces is “probably their most famous film”, at least according to the blurb on my copy. Certainly, it’s the one you see bandied about the most; but then it’s in the public domain (one of only two Laurel & Hardy films where that’s the case), so it’s inevitably subject to endless cheapo releases. Leaving the quality of the print aside (it was poor; but at least it wasn’t cut, which apparently many are), I can’t say I was too impressed by the quality of the content, either.

Here’s the rub: it’s a comedy, but it barely made me laugh. The humour operates at a basic level, with gags that are either well-worn or repetitious. “How anyone could be so stupid as to stand there and continually bump their head is beyond me,” one of them says at one point. And yet the other does exactly that, because that’s the level most of the film’s humour operates at. Some might say this is the downside of the duo being popular and their work being old — i.e. it’s been imitated and copied for decades, and we’ve moved on. But I don’t find that to be the case with silent comedians —who were equally, if not even more, popular, and whose work is even older — nor with things like the Road to films — which are far from the height of sophisticated comedy, but tickle my fancy more often.

Well, there’s your answer, I guess: it’s all a matter of taste. And it seems Laurel and Hardy aren’t to mine.

The Flying Deuces is the 41st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Apollo 10½:
A Space Age Childhood

(2022)

I guess one of the advantages of being a filmmaker with some degree of clout is you can take your regular-ass childhood and turn it into a movie as if it was somehow special. That’s what the Before trilogy and Boyhood mastermind Richard Linklater has done here, fictionalising his autobiography as the story of ten-year-old Stanley, who lives in Huston, Texas, in the era of the first moon landing. Except, in this version, Stanley is secretly recruited by NASA to secretly train to be a secret astronaut to secretly be the first person on the Moon, in secret. If that sounds like an unusual spin on a traditional nostalgia-driven biopic, don’t get excited: that subplot is moved away from as quickly as it’s introduced, and only pops back up two or three more times, each brief. The film is much more concerned with real memories than imagined ones, and is much less fun for it.

Often, at Christmas or other such get-togethers, members of my family will end up reminiscing about various childhood recollections. I’m sure many other families do a similar thing. What’s shared on these occasions are the kind of mundane memories that mean the world to us but, if you stopped to think about it, you know no outsider would find of much value. Well, seems Richard Linklater hasn’t stopped to think about it. And I really do mean “mundane”: there’s a sequence about which sibling did which chores and how they made their school lunches. As a commenter on iCM put it, Linklater “name checks every TV show and movie he saw, every game he played, everything in his diary […] for long stretches, it just feels like an itemized list of childhood memories.”

One part that’s actually rather good is Jack Black’s voiceover narration as the adult Stanley. There’s probably too much of it (again underlining the fact these are nostalgic anecdotes rather than a true narrative), but the actual quality he brings is very nice. It feels calm and understated, neither giving in to Black’s usual mania nor substituting it for the hardcore tweeness you might expect from such a rose-tinted autobiography.

Maybe Apollo 10½ will be more interesting to young people or future generations, whose technology- and safety-obsessed childhood experiences will be so far removed from what we see here. To them, it’s an historical documentary. I can’t say my childhood was much like this one (especially as it occurred almost 30 years later), but I guess I’ve picked up enough of this kind of nostalgia from other American films and TV series down the years that what Linklater has to share doesn’t feel remarkable enough to be worth sharing.

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood is the 42nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

My Name Is Julia Ross

(1945)

Here we have one of those films that commonly gets called a film noir, but isn’t really (or, at least, doesn’t fit well with the standard conception of what noir entails). The blurb for Arrow’s Blu-ray release describes it as a “Gothic-tinged Hitchcockian breakout hit” (apparently it was produced as a B-movie but became so popular they promoted it to “A-feature status”), which struck me as accurate — it’s less standard noir, more a Rebecca-influenced psychological thriller. While it’s clearly no Hitchcock, it’s a very entertaining substitute.

Nina Foch stars as the eponymous Julia Ross, who takes a job as a live-in secretary for a wealthy widow. But the job is a front: Julia is kidnapped, waking up a prisoner in a Cornish mansion, where the widow (Dame May Whitty) and her son (George Macready) try to convince her she’s actually Marion Hughes, the son’s wife, and she’s having a bit of an episode.

From the way Arrow described the film, I assumed it was going to play to some degree with the idea that maybe she is actually mad. It would be a neat twist, right? That she is Marion Hughes, and the stuff we saw at the start was part of her delusion. But no, the film doesn’t even vaguely gesture at that route: right after Julia meets her prospective employer, we see that she’s plotting something nefarious — and the film isn’t even seven minutes in. Then, even before we really know that something’s up, Julia’s fancy-man is looking into her disappearance. It’s like the film’s playing all the right notes but in the wrong order.

But it doesn’t really matter, because the whole thing is suitably entertaining. Rather than relying on the mystery of what’s happening, it’s more about how Julia can get out of the situation. Will she be able to escape her confinement? Can she somehow get out a message for help? Or will the villains succeed in their scheme? Plus, at just 65 minutes, it moves at a whipcrack pace, so you can sit back and enjoy the absurd plot rather than worrying about, well, how absurd it is.

My Name Is Julia Ross is the 43rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Ambulance

(2022)

When their bank heist goes sideways, two brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) make their getaway in a stolen ambulance — with a policeman they shot and the paramedic working on him (Eiza González) in the back. With the cops immediately on their tail, thus begins an epic ~~car~~ ambulance chase around the streets of LA.

The setup feels like it should signal the low-/mid-budget debut of a new director showcasing their talents with a 90-minute stripped-back thrill-ride that’s mostly contained to the eponymous setting. But it’s not directed by some newbie — it’s Michael frickin’ Bay, back on the form that gave us action classics like The Rock. And so the 90-minute character-focused thriller is in there (honest it is), but augmented with 40 minutes of big-budget Bayhem.

Compared to Bay’s other work in the past 15 or so years, Ambulance feels restrained. Compared to almost any other filmmaker, it’s anything but. When I say “restrained”, part of what I mean is the editing. Not that it takes a leisurely approach by any means, but it doesn’t have that “impressionistic jumble of B-roll” style Bay has tended towards on and off ever since Armageddon, and that became his only mode during a couple of the Transformers sequels. Also, I didn’t notice this until I read it on IMDb, but the film contains a literal Chekhov’s gun — that is, a gun that is a “Chekhov’s gun”. That’s so Michael Bay.

Giving this film 5 stars would be a bit silly… but it was really good. It’s the kind of movie you’d never rate higher than 4, but you love for what it is: magnificent Bayhem.

Ambulance is the 44th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It placed 9th on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2022.

Easy A

(2010)

When an overheard white lie about losing her virginity makes barely-noticed Olive (Emma Stone) the centre of her high school rumour mill, she decides to manipulate her newfound notoriety for her own amusement.

As “raunchy teen comedy” plots go, it hits a sweet spot of being neither too prudish nor too lecherous. The dialogue elevates it further in a sharp and witty script by Bert V. Royal (who, it seems, has since only worked on TV shows I’ve never heard of. Shame). In her first lead role, Emma Stone gives a perfectly-pitched, surprisingly nuanced performance. The story really allows her to show off her versatility, believable as both the ‘quiet girl’ and ‘confident slut’. Obviously there’s lots of comedy, but she sells the moments of sincerity too. It’s no wonder she quickly got snapped up for more awards-type work. Plus, there’s Stanley Tucci being what I imagine Stanley Tucci is actually like as a dad, which is perfection.

The only major downside (and it’s a bit of a spoiler, but also so predictable that it barely counts as a spoiler) is that it would’ve been nice if the guy she eventually ends up with wasn’t so stereotypically hot. We’re meant to buy him as a kinda-goofy sports mascot rather than someone who’d actually be playing The Sport? Yeah right.

I’m not always a fan of high school movies or teen comedies, but there are definite exceptions, and this is the latest addition to that rarefied list.

Lupin the Third: Is Lupin Still Burning? (2018)

Posted on July 9, 2022 by badblokebob

aka Rupan sansei: Rupan wa imamo moeteiruka?

Lupin the Third: Is Lupin Still Burning?

Whether you want to call this a short film or a TV special or something else entirely (it was originally released straight to DVD as a special feature in Japan) is little more than a technicality, really. It’s a sub-40-minute standalone piece, and therefore I’m counting it as a short film (it also has been screened theatrically, so it’s not a totally ridiculous classification).

What it definitely is is a 50th anniversary special for the Lupin the Third franchise. Best known in the West thanks to Hayao Miyazaki’s debut feature, The Castle of Cagliostro, Lupin III is actually a sprawling franchise. Beginning life in 1967 as a manga written and illustrated by a chap called Monkey Punch (I suspect not his birth name), an anime TV series followed in 1971, since when there have been multiple further series, dozens of films (both theatrical and TV specials), plus a couple of attempts at live-action movies, and a bunch of video games and stuff too.

Although this short was produced to mark the birthdate of the comics, it takes its cue from the anime series, the first episode of which was called Is Lupin Burning…?! and had the same setup: Lupin is to take part in a car race, but it’s actually a lethal trap set by his enemies. But from there, this version spins off into some wacky time-travel shenanigans — a way to send our hero back into key adventures and moments from his history, handily.

Appropriately for a 50th anniversary special, Is Lupin Still Burning is loaded with references (both major and minor) for diehard fans to enjoy. As someone who has enjoyed a couple of Lupin’s adventures but is a long way from being well-versed in his world, I could tell a load of stuff was flying over my head — almost everything, in fact — which was unfortunate, but understandable. This is clearly a celebration that’s primarily aimed at dyed-in-the-wool fans rather than pleasing or initiating newcomers. That said, it still just about works as a madcap one-off adventure. It’s particularly enjoyable in the kinetic action sequences, like a destructive car race — being held in Nomaco (work out the ‘pun’ for yourself) — that plays out during the opening credits.

The franchise’s only regular female cast member, Fujiko Mine, spends most of the film captured by the villains, strapped to a torture table with her clothing mostly torn off, being tickled by robot hands and stuff like that. Your feelings about all this are your own; I describe it merely for context. Put another way, not all of the “fan service” requires prior knowledge to be, er, serviceable.

I expect if you’re a long-term fan of Lupin III, this fan-service-filled short is deserving of at least 4 stars. As someone without that depth of knowledge, it’s unmistakeable that you’re missing out on plenty. The callbacks aren’t little asides or background nods, but fundamental to the plot of the piece. Nonetheless, I’m giving it a positive score, because it is still enjoyable, even if it’s clearly not really made for the likes of me.

2022 | Week 22

Posted on July 8, 2022 by badblokebob

Maybe I should’ve called this post “Weeks 21–22”, to ensure that the titles of these roundups had a complete run of weeks throughout the year. But I didn’t actually watch anything new in Week 21 (my only film that week was the Challenge-qualifying rewatch of On the Town), so it seemed inaccurate to include it.

Week 22, on the other hand, was moderately busy, with this lot…

This Means War (2012)

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1982)

The Pajama Game (1957)

The Contender (2000)

This Means War

(2012)

McG | 98 mins | digital (HD) | 2.35:1 | United States / English | 12 / PG-13

I bet whoever came up with this thought they were a genius: “spyfi action-adventure + rom-com? It’s the perfect date movie!” Of course, what you actually end up with is a film that struggles to do either part well.

It stars the unlikely combo of Chris Pratt and Tom Hardy (you definitely can’t imagine Hardy doing a movie like this today) as BFF CIA agents who independently fall for the same woman, played by Reese Witherspoon. Uh-oh. Hilarity ensues as the guys deploy their CIA tricks and tech to influence the relationships. Yeah, it’s the kind of concept that once upon a time sounded like a fun and quirky rom-com, but nowadays seems at best morally dubious, at worst downright creepy. And, indeed, that’s how it plays out, with situation after situation that’s played for laughs but feels a little uncomfortable.

Of course, the big question is “who ends up with who?” This is one of those films so committed to its storyline, so structured to lead to one correct answer, that… they shot multiple endings so they could decide in post. The one they went with doesn’t feel quite right, but, if you imagine the alternatives, most of them don’t either. Well, I say that: I don’t think it’s really a spoiler to tell you that Witherspoon ends up with one of the guys, when the correct choice would’ve been “neither of them. Run from the stalker-ish CIA agents! Find a normal man!”

To Be or Not to Be

(1942)

Ernst Lubitsch’s satire concerns an acting troupe in occupied Poland who become mixed up in a soldier’s efforts to capture a German spy before he can undermine the resistance. Made while World War II was still in full force, the film attracted criticism in some quarters for being a comedy about such tragic and ongoing real-life horrors. Lubitsch defended his work, writing to one critic to say, “What I have satirized in this picture are the Nazis and their ridiculous ideology. I have also satirized the attitude of actors who always remain actors regardless how dangerous the situation might be, which I believe is a true observation.” He’s right, of course; at least about the first part. Ridiculously, such debates about whether you can satirise the Nazis persist to this very day — just look at some of the responses to Jojo Rabbit.

Lubitsch’s film is subtler than Waititi’s, though still undoubtedly a comedy. I mean, with its plucky resistance members taking occupying Nazis for fools, I couldn’t help but think of this as a classier version of ’Allo ’Allo… but I’ve never actually seen a whole episode of that show, so don’t hold my comparison in too high a regard. Whereas that sitcom is famous for its catchphrases and bawdy gags, To Be or Not to Be is less overt, preferring to paint the Nazis as fundamentally incompetent and derive its humour there.

Despite the distaste some felt, it obviously works for most people, as it appears on several “great movies” lists, not least both the IMDb and Letterboxd Top 250s. To be honest, I feel like I need to give it another spin to digest it more fully, but these thin thoughts will have to suffice for now.

To Be or Not to Be is the 35th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2022.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

(1982)

I’ve never read the P.D. James novel on which this is based, but I’m assured it’s longer and more complex — the film rather lacks for plausible suspects, making the central murder mystery thoroughly guessable.

That said, I’m not sure co-writer/director Christopher Petit is all that concerned with producing a true whodunnit. Put another way, I think he’s more interested in the characters, who happen to be involved in a mystery, than in the mystery itself. Which is fine, but I’m also not sure the film does as good a job as it could digging into those characters. I mean, the way the kinda-naïve young investigator becomes obsessed with the deceased subject of her inquiries — almost falling in love with him, it seems, like some kind of gender-flipped riff on Laura — is more nodded at than explored.

In the end, I felt like I wanted to like the film more than it was actually giving me things I needed to really like it. It’s not bad, but perhaps it could have been great.

The Pajama Game

(1957)

This minor musical is primarily of note for two things: the original Broadway staging featured the choreography debut of one Bob Fosse; and it features the song Hernando’s Hideway — if you don’t recognise the title, I’m sure you’ll recognise the tune. I had no idea this is where it originated.

The story is about a pay dispute in a pyjama factory (given the current strikes and arguments here in the UK, you might think I watched this deliberately. Nope, total coincidence). On one side there’s the leader of the union’s grievance committee (Doris Day, one of just a handful of replacements made to the original cast when they transferred the stage production to the screen). On the other, the new superintendent (John Raitt, clearly a success on Broadway but less so on film). Of course, they fall for each other, before the pay conflict tears them apart. Can their love overcome such trials? What do you think?

I saw someone describe The Pajama Game as an overlooked classic, which is taking things a bit far. It’s mostly likeable and quite fun, but rarely transcends that level. The undoubted highlight is Fosse’s choreography, which gives even the lesser numbers a polished dynamism. There are a couple of decent songs, but nothing really stands out, bar the aforementioned. It gets a bit too farcical in places, with some of the storylines ultimately taking a turn into very broad territory that feels misjudged. One primarily for genre fans only.

The Contender

(2000)

I only picked this up on disc because it was part of a bundle of other titles I really wanted, but it also sounded like the kind of thing I’d like. Strange that I’d not heard of it before, then. I guess some films just get lost in movie history, especially when they’re a lesser member of a whole wave of movies. This is a political thriller of the kind they seemed to make quite a few of during the ’90s and into the early ’00s, but don’t really do anymore. I guess they exhausted the well, especially after 156 episodes of The West Wing.

In this case, the story revolves around Laine Hanson (Joan Allen), the first woman nominated to be Vice President (it only took another two decades for that to happen in real life). There’s the familiar battle between the Democrats to get her confirmed, and the Republicans who’d like to do anything to thwart the Democrats. Amongst the scheming between the two sides, the big revelation is that Laine possibly engaged in a scandalous sex act while in college. She refuses to confirm or deny the rumour — it’s her personal business and shouldn’t affect her appointment. Except, of course, it does.

Various other allegations come and go throughout the confirmation process, the two sides continuing to go back and forth in their attempts to win. It’s not necessarily the point the film is making, but it’s a reminder that politics is all a game to those involved, even as it can have serious effects on the lives of the rest of us. More overtly, the film tackles the different standards a woman is held to when trying to take public office. Fortunately, it’s not as overbearing with that as it could be. Indeed, all round the film is fairly understated. It’s a solid, unflashy, procedural-based kind of thriller.

That is until the end, when it throws away the understatement for a grandstanding speech based around a fundamental belief in the greatness and goodness of the American political system. It would be heavy-handed in any circumstance, but the past few years (if not longer) of American politics have shown it for the total lie it always was. It doesn’t wholly undermine what’s gone before, but it does end the film on a sour note.

2022 | Weeks 18–20

Posted on June 24, 2022 by badblokebob

These three weeks take us most of the way through May. When I first started writing this batch of reviews, I thought that would bring me almost up-to-date… but then I realised we were already over halfway through June, and, as I finish it, June is almost over. Time flies!

It’s partly because I haven’t been watching as many films over the past couple of months (so it doesn’t feel like I watched these as long ago as I actually did), instead spending a lot of my leisure time on finally watching Apple TV+ series For All Mankind (I’ve just finished season one, which was really good, and I hear only gets better) and replaying all the Monkey Island games (I’m on the fifth and, to date, final one now).

But I digress. Because I already posted Shang-Chi and Frances Ha separately, the remaining reviews from this period are…

The Monolith Monsters (1957)

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

The Monolith Monsters

(1957)

I watched this film in Eureka’s box set of ’50s B-movies, Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror. As you can tell from its inclusion there — and, indeed, its title — this is one of a wave of “monster movies” from that era. Except it isn’t, really. In fact, it’s a sci-fi disaster movie jerry-rigged into what I guess was the prevailing B-movie trend of the day: the eponymous ‘Monolith Monsters’ aren’t monsters at all, but an alien rock that expands relentlessly.

Whatever you want to call it, the film offers a mix of B-movie daftness and real-sounding science that’s quite appealing. For example: our heroes discover this crazy, hitherto unknown multiplying rock; then realise they have maybe two days to stop it before it destroys their town; and rather than, say, alert the government, or call in expert help, they decide to… figure it out for themselves. But it does make you wonder: is this poor B-movie logic, or just 1950s Americanness? I love the thought that some crazy extraterrestrial incident may have occurred in some backwater town in the middle of nowhere, and no one ever knew about it because the locals just dealt with it themselves. “Oh yeah, aliens invaded back in ’57, but we didn’t see the need to bother nobody else with it, just shut ’em down ourselves.”

Yet for all that silliness, there’s some scientific logic in play too. Whether it’s real science or “close enough”, I don’t know (let’s be honest, it’s probably the latter), but they manage to make it sound convincing. It helps contribute to an exciting climax, in which a plan to stop the monoliths can only be executed at the last moment before the town is overrun. Rocks don’t normally move fast enough to create race-against-time tension, but hey, these are alien rocks.

The more I reflect on The Monolith Monsters, the more I like it. For a pulpy B-movie, it has an appealing seriousness. Sure, there’s some schlockiness that I wager is inevitable thanks to its era and budget range, but it feels like it’s trying to be more than trashy entertainment, aiming instead to be a more grounded, almost realistic sci-fi thriller. In reaching for that end it becomes a little slow going at times, but overall it’s quite fun.

The Monolith Monsters is the 31st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Hannah and Her Sisters

(1986)

Hannah and Her Sisters is one of writer-director Woody Allen’s more popular and successful films. For example, it was nominated for seven Oscars, winning three; and nowadays, it’s his third highest-rated film on Letterboxd, above the likes of Manhattan and later-career highlight Midnight in Paris. All of which I mention because, personally, it’s the kind of film I’d describe as “something and nothing”, because I liked it well enough, but also didn’t really get what it was going for overall.

It’s the story of… well, Hannah (Mia Farrow) and her sisters. They’re three middle-aged women who all live in New York City (of course) and, over the course of a couple of years, we follow their lives and relationships, with a focus on the latter. Actually, if anything, I might argue the biggest focus is on Elliot, played to Oscar-winning effect by Michael Caine, who is married to Hannah but finds himself pining for her sister, Lee (Barbara Hershey).

I say “might argue” because Hannah and Her Sisters is one of those films that feels like a collection of subplots. All of the storylines play out, then they stop, with happy endings almost across the board, and that’s your film. I expect it’s based around a theme of some kind, but all I really got it from it was the old “the grass is always greener” adage. Apparently Allen particularly wanted to make something about the relationship between sisters, because he thought that was more complex than between brothers. Fair enough, but I’m not sure it really comes across in the finished film. There are only about two or three scenes in which the sisters actually interact. They’re mostly off on their own subplots; and while those subplots do effect each other, I don’t think they truly speak to the sisters’ relationships; not in any revelatory depth, anyway.

I’ve enjoyed quite a few of Allen’s films that I’ve seen, but Hannah and Her Sisters won’t be cracking my personal favourites of his work. It was fine to watch — not exceptionally funny or dramatic or insightful or original, but fine — and then it ends, and we go on with our lives. It’s not bad, but it also wasn’t anything much. Not to me, anyway.

Hannah and Her Sisters is the 32nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022.

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers

(2022)

On the surface, there’s nothing here for me — a live-action remake/reboot of a late-’80s/early-’90s cartoon that I don’t remember ever watching — but something persuaded me to watch the trailer, and that convinced me to watch the film the moment I could. If you’ve missed said trailer, or any of the attendant hype or reviews, what sold me is that this isn’t just an update of a children’s cartoon with modern tech, but a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-style riff on cartoon celebrity.

Like Roger Rabbit, it’s set in a version of our world where cartoons are ‘real’ and living alongside us, and they act in the TV shows and movies we know them from. Decades on from the Rescue Rangers TV show, Chip (voiced by John Mulaney) and Dale (Andy Samberg) no longer get along, but when an old friend goes missing, they’re thrust into investigating his disappearance together.

Frankly, the plot and character arcs feel like stuff you’ve seen before — probably because we have. Although Roger Rabbit is the obvious reference, the film’s storyline feels very similar to the Melissa McCarthy-starring Muppet version of the concept from a couple of years ago, The Happytime Murders. It works better here, though, because it’s not leaning on crudeness as a comedic crutch. If you didn’t see that film, it might be to Chip ’n Dale’s advantage in terms of feeling fresh.

Instead, the best bit of the film is that it’s full to bursting with fun nods and references to pretty much every facet of (Western) animation. These are often tucked away in the background or on the periphery for the eagle-eyed to enjoy, with the film rarely (if ever) stopping to show them off. To its credit, that means the abundant Easter eggs aren’t allowed to overshadow the story, and so the film avoids using them in the same way Happytime Murders used its vulgarity. It’s just a shame that said story is a little well-worn.

Ultimately, Chip ’n Dale gave me the same kind of entertainment as its trailer, but for 95 minutes. Which, in a way, is fair enough — no one can accuse the trailer of being misrepresentative. On the other hand, it would be nice if there’d been something more to substantive to discover. It’s no contender for Roger Rabbit’s throne, but nor is it another Happytime mess. My score rounds up, because I did have fun.

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers is the 33rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

* There was no certificate listed on the BBFC website at time of review. As you may or may not know, there’s actually no legal requirement for streamers to have their content certified, and so it seems Disney haven’t bothered. For what it’s worth, Disney+ lists the film as “9+”, which I guess equates to PG. ^